Klaus Paier

INFO

Since the 19th century, the accordion has embodied human independence and cultural identity in music, playing an outstanding role in folk and dance music the world over. Today it is used in folklore and even avant-garde and counts as one of the emancipated voices in the manifold choir of instruments.

Klaus Paier began tentatively exploring the accordion at the age of eight. “The sound of the instrument and the transparency of playing it was always a priority for me. But you can only accomplish this by means of very specific co-ordination of the bellows and specially customized arrangements. This was the only way I was able to liberate the instrument from its characteristic fuzziness of phrasing and density of sound”, Klaus Paier describes his playing style. He studied accordion, jazz and composition at Klagenfurt conservatory, constantly experimenting during this time in various styles (classical, jazz, contemporary music) and, as of 1993, consistently carrying out his own projects.

When asked which form of music has influenced him most strongly, Klaus Paier answers, “Jazz and tango gave me the freedom to develop my own language of music”. Paier has been particularly inspired by such instrumentalists as Keith Jarrett, Bill Evans, Charles Mingus or Thelonious Monk. For him, their conception of jazz, with its wide diversity of musical possibilities and freedoms, was of inestimable importance. Continuing his search for a very individual form of expression on the accordion, Klaus Paier later discovered Dino Saluzzi, then – through him – Astor Piazzolla’s Tango Nuevo and, from there, the bandoneon, an instrument he is now using more and more often. Paier sees tango in itself more as an element of style. He uses it as a kind of projection surface for his musical inventiveness. But the historically evolved European sounds of the accordion have also featured in his playing and his compositions: Le voyage à Paris, Musette Waltz (France), Tarantella (Italy), Bulgarian Dance (Balkans), are just a few examples of Paier’s integrative diversity of composition in this field. Through his collaboration with a string quartet, and inspired by his in-depth study of Bela Bartok, Claude Debussy and Erik Satie, the classical component came to play an important role in Paier’s musical explorations (compositions such as Chambre trois, Tres Sentimientos). The accordionist processes experimental and contemporary elements above all in a duo with saxophonist Gerald Preinfalk.

No matter in what form Paier expresses himself in music, in addition to a diversity of stylistic possibilities, his playing is characterised by the resoluteness and intensity with which he presents his projects. Emphatically he frees himself of all instrumental expectations, thereby liberating, as it were, the accordion from its historical burden and penetrating completely new spheres of music. He himself aims to express a positively charged polarity in music: attraction and rejection, weight and lightness, loudness and quietness, openness and self-containment, strict discipline and passionate explosiveness. He accomplishes this feat again and again in an inimitable manner, enthralling his audience in concert tours in Israel, France, Italy, Sweden, Poland and many other European countries. Be it as a soloist, with his duo partner Gerald Preinfalk, in the trio with Stefan Gfrerrer and Roman Werni, or the “radio string quartet” – Klaus Paier ranks among the great European accordionists with a world-wide reputation.
Jörg Konrad (freelance music journalist, Germany)